Light Bulb Regulation – President Fails Elementary Math

This post in a direct response to the post directly below this one, this earlier post from CEI regarding how President Obama has said that replacing existing light globes in your home will result in huge energy savings, specifically this claim:

This is something that can be calculated quite definitely, so when you see the figures I have here, be aware this is not something I have just ‘made up’ in an effort to score a political point.

I have gone to great lengths to explain that by replacing existing globes with these new Compact Fluorescent Light globes (CFL), any savings are not only minimal, but in fact are miniscule. This is one link to an explanatory post and this is a second link, but let’s do the math again, and for that I’ll use the same chart as I always have, from the Government’s own website, The Energy Information Administration, that chart at the right here, and it can be opened in a new and larger window by clicking on the image.

As you can see, residential lighting consumes only 8.8% of all the power you use in your home.

With household lighting, the light most used is the kitchen light, the first turned on, and usually the last turned off. This light is already a high intensity fluorescent light as housing construction convention mandates that this is a work area and requires bright lighting, and the brightest are those fluorescent lights. This one light alone consumes 60% of all the lighting power usage requirements for your house. For the remainder, most garages already have a fluoro light in there, as do most bathrooms. A lot of main bedrooms now have those small bright down lights installed flush with the ceiling.

So that leaves the rest of the lights in your house to replace with these new CFL’s. Second and third bedrooms, the laundry, bathroom, toilet, bedside lights etc.

Having said that the kitchen light alone makes up 60% of all lighting, and with current existing fluorescent lights and down lights, then that leaves around 25% of your household lighting remaining. These new CFL’s only consume one quarter to one fifth of the power that old style incandescent light bulbs use, so now the savings actually can be calculated.

Lighting makes 8.8% of the total power consumption. 25% is what is left to replace, and the saving is 75%. So that is 8.8% X 25% X 75%, or a grand total of 1.65%. The average power bill for the U.S. is $100 per month, so the saving amounts to $1.65 per month, or just on 40 cents a week, or $20 a year.

Further extrapolated out across the whole U.S. there are a certain number of consumers. Some have 2 houses, but at any one time, they can only live in one house or another, using the lighting at that house they are in at the time. So, for the 100 million consumers, that makes the whole savings across the U.S. to be $2 billion, and most definitely not the $4 Billion quoted by the President.

However, those savings are also illusory. To achieve this, you need to replace all the globes in your house. Never mind that some of those lights are very rarely used, and some for only minutes a day, and some not at all, you are looking at replacing up to 8 of those globes in your house, conservatively.

Go to any retail outlet’s web site and check out the cost of those globes. The link to this page is from Lowe’s Hardware. They retail from $9 to $12 each. You can get some of the cheaper ones but the same applies when getting cheap anything. They won’t last as long as the name brands. I have four of these globes in my own home, replacing them as the old incandescent ones ‘blow’. One of those new CFL’s has already blown, and I only had it for 8 weeks.

The ones designed best to last the distance cost that price I quoted.

So, replacing 8 globes at the average price of $10.50, you’re looking at $84. So those projected savings of $20 per year will not kick in until they pay for themselves, and that’s after 4 years.

So, any savings won’t start to kick in until half way through the President’s second term, dependent upon if he wins that second term that is.

At the same time, he’s pushing through this Cap and Trade Bill, a Bill that will raise your electrical energy costs by hundreds of dollars a year, and that will start straight away.

Great. Increase costs to consumers by hundreds and then tell them they can save a measly twenty bucks a year on those costs, and that won’t kick in for years.

Don’t you just love Voodoo Economics.

Also you might even think there will be savings in electrical power generation costs, and a resultant cutback in CO2 emissions. Also not true.

You see, here’s where people have the wrong idea about electrical power generation. They equate it with a situation similar to driving a car. As you drive that car, you consume fuel. Not so with electrical power generation.

The savings by converting to these CFL’s may ‘seem’ quite large, but in actual fact they are spread across every power plant in the Country, amounting to the tiniest of all reduction, one barely even discernible at all.

These projected savings are extrapolated out on paper for a projected total, when in actual fact, absolutely nothing will change, because all of this is on paper only, in much the same manner as those who tout Solar power say that the power will supply X number of houses. The power is supplied to the grid only, and the power is calculated as being the same as what those X number of houses might use.

The same applies here. They calculate on paper the savings and then extrapolate that out over the whole of the U.S.

However, unlike a car that uses fuel as it goes. electrical power is not like that.

The power is generated to an amount that is carefully calculated to be there at all times, plus a certain percentage. Then, as you connect to the power it is there, ready for you to use. You don’t turn on power, (or a whole bunch of people turn on their power), and then a whole range of plants run up to speed to provide that power.

No!

That power is always there, and as you connect, then you draw it down.

So, any savings on generated power are also illusory, and carefully quoted to distract you from what is actually happening.

As a separate ‘paper’ exercise, the amount of power saved if every single household residence in the U.S. converted every globe to one of these new CFL’s, and did it right now, the amount of power saved would be the equivalent power produced from just one of those large coal fired power plants, like Bruce Mansfield, with a Nameplate capacity of 2740MW. Again, that seems a lot, when quoted as being for one plant alone, but as I said, this is spread across every plant in the whole of the U.S.

Some might actually say that a statement like this is not really the fault of the President, as he only says what his advisers tell him, and does not really understand electrical power generation, but really, it can be called his fault, because, as the President, then he should be getting his facts absolutely right, not just giving us ‘spin’ to agree with a viewpoint he wishes to pursue. Also, by not actually checking, he gives the ‘impression’ that he thinks of us as idiots who can’t actually work something like this out for ourselves. I did it.

If he makes errors like this, and this is just on a tiny scale, then heaven help us for the really big decisions.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Tony from Oz post here is
that he is one of the few I have seen that considers real power plant
energy usage.
This particularly applies to coal – the main “culprit” also regarding emissions.
As per DEFRA and other studies, the main incandescent lighting use is
off-peak after 7pm in typical industrialized countries.
At such times even newer “cycling” coal plants are still only turned
down to a minimum base level that more than enough covers whatever
bulb people are using – they are not turned down further for operative
cost reasons
(slow downturn and upturn, wear and tear costs etc, as APTEC etc referenced)

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Tony from Oz post here is that he is one of the few I have seen that considers real power plant energy usage.
This particularly applies to coal – the main “culprit” also regarding emissions.
As per DEFRA and other studies, the main incandescent lighting use is off-peak after 7pm in typical industrialized countries.
At such times even newer “cycling” coal plants are still only turned down to a minimum base level that more than enough covers whatever bulb people are using – they are not turned down further for operative cost reasons
(slow downturn and upturn, wear and tear costs etc, as APTEC etc referenced)

Thanks for leaving a Comment here. Dedicated ‘Peaking Power’ time periods are every day, from around 6AM until 9AM, and again in the afternoon and evening from around 5PM until 10PM, when Residential power consumption rises considerably. Those times, especially during that longer evening session are the times when household lighting is at its greatest consumption.

In fact, here in Australia, Peak Power consumption is considered to be from 7AM until 10PM, as shown with this chart of daily costs from the AEMO, the Australian Energy Marketing Authority, the Australian Regulator, and shown in the text directly above the chart.

During Peak Power periods nearly all available power plants are delivering power at their maximum rates.

Let’s try to be a little objective here, you use quite a bit of “assuming” in many of areas of your discussion. I’ll let the cost comparison slide, but the idea that efficiency in general is not a good idea, is a little hard to take.

One problem that continually comes from many people ,is the idea that a president is actually in charge. When did President Obama become an expert on energy? He has advisers that have been giving him bad advise from the beginning of the administration in 2008. So putting a renewable energy profit program on the American people, should be directed at the manufacturers and lobbyists of these products.

If there is an issue of corporations driving profits and it is not double digit profits for stockholders, you need to mandate a new product that cost more.

BTW. Coal is still the number one product burned in the US. It is lignite and better than what we had, but not by all that much. Washington State is an exception to all the rules, Seattle is powered by a hydro dam and for that very reason ,it has electric buses and trollies downtown. Seattle also enjoys a higher standard of living and less taxes, due to that hydro power.

Your details are disconcerting. I see your frustration in an era that is supposedly a transitional time for energy generation. The energy costs should not be running economies, and wars should not be fought over resources, but they are. What would influence the world to determine that energy is not a means to profit and power over people?

With respect to the coal being burned in power plants across the U.S. most of that is bituminous and sub bituminous coal, and they are black coals, which burns better and emits less CO2 than brown coal. (which is the Lignite you refer to here)

My comment to it is not (yet) published,
but as you can see fromhttp://www.ceolas.net/#li1x onwards
I have also extensively criticized the ban and the reasons given, including savings.

Very good about savings….

I have criticized it from another angle, that might be of interest…

Americans choose to buy ordinary light bulbs around 9 times out of 10.
Banning what Americans want gives the supposed savings – no point in banning an impopular product!
All lighting devices have different advantages and give out different types of light.
That’s why they exist for people to choose.
The ordinary simple light bulb responds quickly with bright broad spectrum light, is
easy to use with dimmers and other equipment, can come in small sizes, and has safely been used for over 100 years.
For some that is a reason for banning it: Why keep simple old technology?
Because if modern lights were better, people would buy more of them instead.
Consumers don’t avoid products only because they are expensive – or no other expensive products would be sold.
Nor do they keep buying cheap but poor products.
There are – for example- well known batteries and washing up liquids that are expensive but sell well because they “last longer”
– as they show in their advertising.
Fluorescent light manufacturers and distributors are very happy to let governments promote their case,
and happy that they ban the lights that people are buying, so the fluorescent (and/or LED) light manufacturers can win market share
– why should they bother making better products and advertise them?
They can clean up the market and charge what they like when those cheap competing rivals keeping down prices are gone.

Is this the New America?
You can buy any car, as long as it is an Obama car?
You can buy any light bulb, as long as it is an Obama light bulb?

Put it this way:
New LED lamps are on the way.
If they are good, people will buy them – no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (little point).
If they are not good, people will not buy tham – no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (no point).

“Look at all the energy we save”,
says President Obama.
Since when does America need to save on electricity?
There is no energy shortage, there are plenty of energy sources, and Middle East oil is not used for electricity generation.
Consumers pay for any power stations, just as they do for factories and shops generally.
Certainly it is good to let people know how they can save energy and money – but why force them to do it?

“Look at all the emission savings”,
says President Obama.
Do his light bulbs give out any gases?
Power stations might not either:
In Washington state practically all electricity is emission-free, around half of it is in states like New York and California.
Why should emission-free households there be denied the use of lighting they obviously want to use?
Such households will increase everywhere, since emissions will be reduced through the planned use of coal/gas processing
technology or energy substitution.

About why all efficiency regulation is wrong,
and how they affect performance, construction, appearance, price and savings on buildings, dishwashers, cars, light bulbs etchttp://ceolas.net/#cc2x

TonyfromOz replies ….
Thank you for your comments.
Even though this reply is from me, I urge all of you who are reading this post to take the link in the above comment to the site.
This is perhaps the most in depth response to the introduction of the Compact Fluorescent Lighting that I have yet seen. It’s a long ‘read’, but is well worth it.
I would also urge you to pay particular attention to the section in this article regarding the Mercury content of these new bulbs, and the resultant danger that seems to have been glossed over in this rush to introduce something that gives marginal savings if any at all, without taking into account the inherent dangers.

[…] replacement of light bulbs has been one of the hugest fallacies ever imposed upon people. This is a link to an earlier post from 15 months ago where I carefully explain the rhetoric with respect to efficiencies, something […]

[…] that front, lighting in your house amounts to 8% of the total of your electrical account. The post at this link explains that any savings made by converting to those new Compact Fluorescent globes is so minimal […]

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